Quotes about tea
page 2

“A cup of tea would restore my normality."

[]”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Sleep

“Coffee isn't my cup of tea.”

Samuel Goldwyn (1879–1974) American film producer (1879-1974).

Coffee

“Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Context: There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands,
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Time, Indecision

“But I’m just going to be out there having a tea party with her cats or whatever it is she has in mind."

Adrian”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Cats

“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh.

"There there," said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Feeling

“Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept.”

Frances Hardinge (1973) British children's writer

“I expect that you must receive top marks at school, young lady."
Madeleine smiled as she stirred her tea. "There are always rewards for those who state the obvious frequently and with conviction.”

Scott Westerfeld book Touching Darkness

Source: Touching Darkness

School, Smile

“You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Sleep

“I got nasty habits; I take tea at three.”

Mick Jagger (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones

“Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.”

Kelly Link (1969) American writer

Reading, Hurt

“The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosiness.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Code of the Woosters

Source: The Code of the Woosters

Light, Housing, Country

“Look, he isn’t even concerned.”
I poured the tea. “He’s concerned, Mother. He just doesn’t panic, because he’s in charge and if he panics, everybody else will panic.”
“I can jog around the room pretending to scream if you would like,” Jim offered.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Dreams

“A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.”

Charles Lamb book Essays of Elia

Source: Essays of Elia

Books, Dogs, Reading

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Volume II [Tauchnitz, 1860] ( p. 226 https://books.google.com/books?id=xAm2X8YfpJIC&pg=PA226) Also in The Secret Ingredient by Laura Schaefer [Simon & Schuster, 2012, ISBN 1-442-41960-1] ( p. 169 https://books.google.com/books?id=o1ctj37QuikC&pg=PA169) Source: The Woman in White (1859)

Waiting, Past

“I expect I shall feel better after tea.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Carry On, Jeeves

Source: Carry on, Jeeves

Feeling

“I abhorred weakness of any kind but most particularly in my tea.”

Deanna Raybourn (1968) American writer

Source: A Curious Beginning

“The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Women, Friendship

“To a philosopher all news is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Women, Reading

“Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?—how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Source: Recipe for Salad, p. 383
Source: A memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith

God, World

“I looked at him. "You really need to work on your threats. I can't tell if you're threatening me or inviting me for tea.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

“Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Very Good, Jeeves!

Hell

“A Proper Tea is much nicer than a Very Nearly Tea, which is one you forget about afterwards.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Forgetting

“Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.”

Jasper Fforde (1961) British novelist

Source: Shades of Grey

Wisdom, Problem, Time

“Okay. But I'm just going to be out there - having a tea party with her cats or whatever it is she has in mind. You need me? You yell. You want to leave? We go. I'll get you out of here, no matter what.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Cats

“For me starting the day without a pot of tea would be a day forever out of kilter.”

Bill Drummond (1953) Scottish musician, music industry figure, writer and artist

Source: $20,000

“The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea and you always double knot your shoelaces.' I fight back. Then I dive back into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: But more words tumble out. 'You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.'

Then I dive into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.
Source: Mockingjay

Stupidity, Sleep, Fight, Cry

“I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Love, God

“Do you have any coffee? (Talon)
Ew! No, that stuff will kill you. I have herbal teas, though. (Sunshine)
Herbal teas? That’s mulch, not a beverage. (Talon)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

Coffee

“The now famous slogan 'keep calm and carry on' poster from 1939 was designed as a motivational poster for people living in cities expecting to be bombed by the Nazis. But the UK wasn't just 'keeping calm': we had taken a stand like no other country in the world and declared war on a barbaric regime which was a global threat to peace and security. Today, as we wait to hear news from Manchester following the slaughter and maiming of innocent children, we have people calling for us to do nothing. But it's not the same 'carry on' as in 1939: they want us to accept terror attacks as a part of life we should now accept. Well, I don't accept it. How many people are we going to sacrifice on the alter (sic) of political correctness before we build up the courage to confront what most people will happily admit to their friends and family: that we are facing a continuing threat from radical Islam which hashtags and tea lights will not stop?”

Jane Collins (1962) British politician

Jane Collins MEP responds to terror attacks in Manchester http://jane-collins.org/news.php?id=79. Item on official website (May 23, 2017).

Life, War, Children, People

“My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all
the morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be grey, but your picture on my wall
it reminds me that it's not so bad
it's not so bad”

Dido (1971) English singer-songwriter

Thank You
Song lyrics, No Angel (1999)

“…. well with me now is Geoffrey Robinson. He was once voted 'After-dinner Speaker of the Year', so if you've had your tea, you're in for a treat”

Eddie Mair (1965) Scottish broadcaster

Mon 14 Feb 2011.
From PM and Broadcasting House

“I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless, I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Communication, Freedom

“There was a white man sitting at the kitchen table, warming his hands by wrapping them around a hot cup of tea. He had kind of an oblong face, curly red hair piled on top, a close-cropped but dense red beard, shocking blue eyes that always looked wide open. He face was ruddy with the outdoors, and the way he was sitting there with that tea, he looked so calm, so centered, almost like he was in meditation. When I came in, he looked at me and smiled just a trace, without showing his teeth…”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

The legendary S.T. finally meets the legendary Hank Boone (proto-Enoch Root character), end of chapter 24
Zodiac (1988)

Smile, Way

“And at our feet unbroken lay
The glass that had whirled us thither away:
And in the grass, among the flowers
We sat and wished all sorts of things:
O, we were wealthier than kings!
We ruled the world for several hours!

And then, it seemed, we knew not why,
All the daisies began to die.
We wished them alive again; but soon
The trees all fled up towards the moon
Like peacocks through the sunlit air:
And the butterflies flapped into silver fish;
And each wish spoiled another wish;
Till we threw the glass down in despair;
For, getting whatever you want to get,
Is like drinking tea from a fishing net.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Part III : The Mystic Ruby
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

World, Flowers, Drink, Fish

“That spirit, that feeling for one's comrades in the snow, the moonlight, under the blossoms, is also basic to the tea ceremony. A tea ceremony is a coming together in feeling, a meeting of good comrades in a good season. I may say in passing, that to see my novel Thousand Cranes as an evocation of the formal and spiritual beauty of the tea ceremony is a misreading. It is a negative work, and expression of doubt about and warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremony has fallen.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Beauty, Feeling, Season

“Sheep are especially sensitive to the exact moment of the turn of the tide. In this game, nine tethered sheep react, pull on the stakes, jolt the chairs and rattle the tea-cups. Bets are taken on the combined sensitivity of any three lines of sheep -- read vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Since there are normally three tide-turns every twenty-four hours, it is normal practice to take the best of three results. Reliable clocks, calendars, and time-tables are used to determine the accuracy of the sheep's forecast.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Drowning By Numbers

Game, Time, Reading

“The Muses' friend, Tea, does our fancy aid,
Repress the vapours which the head invade,
And keeps the palace of the soul serene.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Of Tea. Compare: "The dome of thought, the palace of the soul", Lord Byron, Childe Harold, canto ii. stanza 6.
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

Soul

“Well, I flung the window open an' I shouted, "Yes, that's right Millandra – I'm goin' to Greece for the sex; sex for breakfast, sex for dinner, sex for tea, an’ sex for supper." Well, she just ignored me but this little cab driver leans out an' pipes up, "That sounds like a marvellous diet, love." "It is," I shouted back, "have y' never heard of it? It's called the 'F' Plan."”

Willy Russell Shirley Valentine

Shirley, page 40.
Shirley Valentine (1986)

Love, Sex

“Because in the end those kind of conservative tea-leaf-reading focus group driven polling types who I think led Kim into nothingness, he's got his life to repent in leisure now at what they did to him.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

On Kim Beazley's ALP Leadership, Lateline interview, June 7 2007.

Life, Thinking, Reading

“Populism is at its essence […] just determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. […] One big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, let's get rid of government. You need to be saying let's take over government.”

Jim Hightower (1943) Texas author and liberal political activist

Interview by Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal, 30 April 2010 ( transcript http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/transcript2.html, video http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04302010/watch2.html)

People, Understanding, Help

“There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez is an insult — not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put forth the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish between terrorists and Muslims makes us less safe, not more.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear closing speech (2010)

Hate, People, Effort

“The British male has no interest in women. You could get all your clothes off and lie on the sofa and go "Come and get me baby" and they go, "Wanna cuppa tea?"”

Alice Evans (1971) British actress

John Parry article quoting an Evans interview done for The Sunday Times in The Argus July 2002 "Think of it this way".

Women, Lie, Baby, Clothes

“Makes Room at the Top look like a vicarage tea-party.”

Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010) British writer

The Daily Telegraph, reviewing Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; cited from The Bookseller, October 25, 1958, p. 1641.
Also used as a tagline for the 1960 film adaptation.
Criticism

“The real issue here, if you look at the Koch Brothers' agenda, is: look at what many of the extreme right-wing people believe. Obamacare is just the tip of the iceberg. These people want to abolish the concept of the minimum wage, they want to privatize the Veteran's Administration, they want to privatize Social Security, end Medicare as we know it, massive cuts in Medicaid, wipe out the EPA, you don’t have an Environmental Protection Agency anymore, Department of Energy gone, Department of Education gone. That is the agenda. And many people don’t understand that the Koch Brothers have poured hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the tea party and two other kinds of ancillary organizations to push this agenda.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Regarding the United States federal government shutdown of 2013, [Sanders, Bernie, MSNBC News Interview (7 October 2013) (06:41), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LC_4h8rk9E, 7 October 2013, YouTube, 12 October 2013]
[Staff, Bernie Sanders Says Koch Brothers Shut Down Government Via Citizens United, http://www.inquisitr.com/984880/bernie-sanders-says-koch-brothers-shut-down-government-via-citizens-united, 8 October 2013, The Inquisitr, 12 October 2013]
2010s

People, Education, Understanding

“I realise that steam engines aren't everyone's cup of tea. But they're what made England great.”

Fred Dibnah (1938–2004) English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering

Unsourced

“In one famous episode, members of the Congressional Black Caucus walked through a crowd of tea party protesters seeking a provocation. Subsequently they claimed the attendants screamed the N-word and other epithets at them. The press reported it all as fact. Andrew, noting the sea of cameras and iPhones at the event, offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could provide proof of the CBC's claims. No one came forward. That was the Andrew Breitbart I was proud to call my friend.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Andrew Breitbart would tell Steve Bannon to stay in Europe (2018)

Sea

“I thought Mr. Millward never would cease telling us that he was no tea-drinker, and that it was highly injurious to keep loading the stomach with slops to the exclusion of more wholesome sustenance, and so give himself time to finish his fourth cup.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. IX : A Snake in the Grass; Gilbert Markham

Time

“In 1954, I was invited to a tea party hosted in honour of the Queen in Bangalore. She came with her husband to the party held at the Vidhan Soudha. I was keen to meet the Queen personally. I conveyed my desire to Vijayalakshmi Pandit, sister of India's first premier Jawaharlal Nehru, who was present. She immediately facilitated a meeting with the Queen for me and my wife Radhadevi.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

In "When 'Maharaja of Travancore' met Queen Elizabeth II (8 July 2012)".

Sister, Personality

“He had an inspiration and went to the Quinta's kitchen and stole two large tins of tea. He reckoned it was time Kate did something for her country and there were few finer gestures than donating good China tea to riflemen.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 136
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Havoc (2003)

Time, Country

“The hard left, now in control almost everywhere, no longer make any pretense at respect for the U. S. Constitution or for the freedoms it was once supposed to guarantee. They are openly turning America into a Communist country with institutions many times more expensively tyrannical than the amiable tea-tax collectors of good King George.”

Christopher Monckton (1952) British public speaker and hereditary peer

How you can help to curb the over-mighty IRS http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/how-you-can-help-to-curb-the-over-mighty-irs/ WorldNetDaily, January 14, 2014.

Freedom, Time, Country

“Frances Egan, the school nurse, left her nutrition charts long enough to tell me there was nothing that could have been done. "Evelyn had a rough time with her father," she said. "Once she came in beaten black and blue."
"What did you do for her?"
"I gave her a cup of tea."
"Tea? Why tea, for heaven's sake?"
"Why? Because I know all about it," she said, shaking with anger. "I know more than anyone here what goes on outside — poverty, disease, dope, degeneracy — yet I'm not supposed to give them even a band-aid. I used to plead, bang on my desk, talk myself hoarse arguing with kids, parents, welfare, administration, social agencies. Nobody really heard me. Now I give them tea. At least, that's something."
"But you're a nurse," I said helplessly.
She showed me the Directive from the Board posted on her wall: THE SCHOOL NURSE MAY NOT TOUCH WOUNDS, GIVE MEDICATION, REMOVE FOREIGN PARTICLES FROM THE EYE…
Are we, none of us, then, allowed to touch wounds? What is the teacher's responsibility? And if it begins at all, where does it end?”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part V, ch. 26 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Disease, School, Parent, Teachers

“It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.”

Ernest Bramah book The Wallet of Kai Lung

The Transmutation of Ling
The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900)

Time

“I know I'm in England because this morning, my stomach got up two hours before I did and had a cup of tea! I've had so much tea, I slosh when I walk! You have to drink tea - I've tasted the coffee!”

Bob Hope (1903–2003) American comedian, actor, singer and dancer

During a radio broadcast recorded in the UK. (During a broadcast in the Soviet Union, Bob re-used the first section, replacing 'England' with 'Russia' and 'cup of tea' with 'Bowl of Borscht')
Audio recording of radio broadcast.

Coffee, Drink

“Someone's killed 100,000 people. We're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym. Your diary must look odd: 'Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death – lunch – death, death, death – afternoon tea – death, death, death – quick shower …' "”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Dress to Kill (1998)

Death, People

“We're going to get into partisan bickering because more than half of Republicans agreed with the statement that said Obama is trying to impose Islamic law on America. I mean that is a very radical thing to believe. And it's more than half of Republicans. Not tea baggers. Not radicals. The mainstream Republican people.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Larry King Live interview (2010)

People, Law

“The duty on British teas was slight. Americans might have paid the duty without increasing the price of their much prized luxury; ministers might have collected the same duty in England to the advantage of the Exchequer. That Britain should have insisted on this peppercorn in acknowledgement of her right, that America should have refused it in vindication of her liberty, may be taken as a high tribute from two eminently practical peoples to the power of abstract ideas.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

People, Idea

“She began to speak, but waited a moment for the maid to clear away the tea. In the waning light her room seemed gentle and grey, and there hung about it an odour (I do not write ‘the odour’) of Roman Catholicism, which is assuredly among the gracious things of the world. It was the room of a woman who had found time to be good to herself as well as to others; who had brought forth fruit, spiritual and temporal; who had borne a mysterious tragedy not only with patience but actually with joy.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

The rock
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

World, Light, Time, Waiting

“Cool, calm, and unemotional. Protestant, for short. It's a fantastic religion, it makes absolutely no demands upon you at all, which is why it's not a great religion. All great religions are built on shame. You don't have any of that if you're Protestant. You go to the church, sing a few hymns, have a cup of tea, everybody goes home and has a wank.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On Protestants.
Like, Totally (2006)

Religion, Home, Singing

“"Summon him forth," instructed the Will. "Let justice be meted out. There is much to do, you know, Arthur."
"You'd think we could 'ave a cup of tea and biscuit first," muttered Suzy.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Mister Monday (2003), p. 392.

Justice, Thinking

“Both the Republican and Tea Party nominees are listed side by side on the Nevada ballot and, ironically, the difference in the race could be the handful of points secured by the Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian, at the expense of Republican Sharron Angle.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

David Paleologos — reported in [Bruce, Drake, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/13/scott-ashjians-tea-party-candidacy-still-a-factor-in-nevada-sen/, Scott Ashjian's Tea Party Candidacy Still a Factor in Nevada Senate Contest, Politics Daily, AOL News, October 13, 2010, 2010-10-14]
About

“I would… earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 10 (11 March 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Parting

“In lecturing on cookery, as on housebuilding, I divide the subject into, not four, but five grand elements: first, Bread; second, Butter; third, Meat; fourth, Vegetables; and fifth, Tea — by which I mean, generically, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served out in teacups, whether they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma, or what not. I affirm that, if these five departments are all perfect, the great ends of domestic cookery are answered, so far as the comfort and well-being of life are concerned.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

Source: Household Papers and Stories (1864), Ch. 10.

Life, Coffee, Drink, Perfection

“Our office corner has really become an area where the Tea party movement congregates and the rhetoric is really heated. Not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

Comment following a window being smashed at her congressional office in Arizona &mdash National Post, Shooting could subdue overheated U.S. political rhetoric, Richard Cowan, Reuters, January 9, 2011, 2011-01-10 http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Shooting+could+subdue+overheated+political+rhetoric/4082898/story.html, alternate link http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7083G120110110

“I ordered up a cup of tea in the morning. We were staying at this magnificent hotel called the Gateway of India – a Taj complex looking over The Gateway of India, which is this beautiful old monument that sits right down on the peninsula of Mumbai. I opened up the screens and I looked down and there were 50 to 60 people all wearing perfect white standing underneath my window. And they were laughing. I thought ‘what are they doing’. One person started laughing and then another person would start, and the next one would start laughing and it was - now I realise – a laughing meditation. It’s very very hard to be unhappy when you are laughing. It’s the truth. That was the start of their day. It was 5.30 in the morning, the sun was just creeping through the Taj complex and over the Gateway of India, I was hearing this laughing meditation and all the whiles in the background I knew that this was actually my time that I was going to arrive as a cricketer. I knew it in my heart. I knew it from the moment I set sights on India.”

Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer

When asked about his favourite memory of India, quoted on The Courier Mail, "The day 50 people laughed at Matthew Hayden" http://www.couriermail.com.au/entertainment/hayden-joins-indian-team/news-story/a88c1a51e63ddd3d9731820f4dc74cf1, March 20, 2016.

People, Truth, Beauty, Time

“I would never save her. I looked at the woman mopping up the tea, and it came to me that I could not save her either. Enola or the cat or any of them, lost here in the endless stairways and cul-de-sacs of time. They were already dead a hundred years, past saving. The past is beyond saving. Surely that was the lesson the history department sent me all this way to learn. Well, fine, I’ve learned it. Can I go home now?”

Connie Willis (1945) American science fiction writer

Source: Fire Watch (1982), pp. 129-130 in The Nebula Awards 18 edited by Robert Silverberg

Way, Home, History, Cats

“He must have decided (to retire) during the course of the day. He spoke to me during tea time and said that he has decided to call it quits. It`s the end of an era. A lot of players in the team, I cannot tell you the names, were in tears when he told them his decision. It was an emotional moment for the team and me. He was an extraordinary cricketer, a great role model, not only for the youngsters but also for the future generations.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

By Krishnamachari Srikanth.
Kumble Calls it a Day: Quotes... For and By Kumble...

Decision, Tear, Time, Future

“Said the great Teacher, “If your son asks for bread, will you give him a stone?” The body calls for bread, for life-giving food, but how often we supply, instead, such indigestible, unwholesome rubbish as pickles, green olives, fried foods, and various abominable mixtures which bring into the body death rather than life. How often, too, the voice which calls for pure, life-giving water is insanely answered by such disease-producing drinks as beer, whisky, wine, tea, or coffee, and the like.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: The Living Temple, p. 58

Life, Death, Disease, Food

“And then I saw the menu, stained with tea and beautifully written by a foreign hand, and on top it said…"Chips with everything". Chips with every damn thing. You breed babies and you eat chips with everything.”

Arnold Wesker Chips with Everything

Chips with Everything, Act 1 (1962)

Baby

“Oh, my friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires.”

Hilaire Belloc book Cautionary Tales for Children

"Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies"
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

“For the uninitiated, Good Omens is a story about how the world is going to end next Saturday. Just after tea. And how the only things standing between us and the inevitable Armageddon are a demon, Crowley, and an angel (and rare book dealer), Aziraphale, who are, rather uncomfortably, working together, not to mention a witch, a very small witchfinder army, the Antichrist (who is 11, and very nice) and his dog.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Good Omens: How Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote a book (2014)

Books, World, Dogs, Angels

“The human mind is a wanton storyteller and even more, a profligate seeker after pattern. We see faces in clouds and tortillas, fortunes in tea leaves and planetary movements. It is quite difficult to prove a real pattern as distinct from a superficial illusion.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Snake Oil"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George the III and the international bankers was the PRIME reason for the Revolutionary War.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Widely quoted statement on the reasons for the American War of Independence sometimes cited as being from Franklin's autobiography, but this statement was never in any edition.
Variants from various small publications from the 1940s:
The refusal of King George to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution.
The refusal of King George to allow the Colonies to operate on an honest Colonial system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the revolution.
The refusal of King George to allow the colonies to operate on an honest, colonial money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the revolution.
Some of the statement might be derived from those made during his examination by the British Parliament in February 1766, published in "The Examination of Benjamin Franklin" in The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803‎ (1813); when questioned why Parliament had lost respect among the people of the Colonies, he answered: "To a concurrence of causes: the restraints lately laid on their trade, by which the bringing of foreign gold and silver into the Colonies was prevented; the prohibition of making paper money among themselves, and then demanding a new and heavy tax by stamps; taking away, at the same time, trials by juries, and refusing to receive and hear their humble petitions".
Misattributed
Variant: The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England and the Rothschild's Bank took away from the colonies their money which created unemployment, dissatisfaction and debt.

Money, War

“Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have left the vulgar stuff alone.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"On Tea", On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (1908)

Soul

“My birthplace was California, but I couldn't forget Armenia, so what is one's country? Is it land of the earth, in a specific place? Rivers there? Lakes? The sky there? The way the moon comes up there? And the sun? Is one's country the trees, the vineyards, the grass, the birds, the rocks, the hills and summer and winter? Is it the animal rhythm of the living there? The huts and houses, the streets of cities, the tables and chairs, and the drinking of tea and talking? Is it the peach ripening in summer heat on the bough? Is it the dead in the earth there?”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Inhale and Exhale (1936), Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia

Way, Drink, Bird, Tree

“Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.”

William Congreve The Double Dealer

Act I, scene i
The Double Dealer (1694)

“This is the most magnificent movement of all! There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire. The people should never rise without doing something to be remembered — something notable and striking. This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I can't but consider it as an epocha in history!”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

On the Boston Tea Party (17 December 1773)
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)

People, History, Effort

“All you’re supposed to do is every once in a while give the boys a little tea and sympathy.”

Robert Anderson (1917–2009) American playwright, screenwriter, and theater producer

"Tea and Sympathy" (1957) act 1

Boy

“Vegas is gorgeous hyperreality, but most of the stuff people like here is not my cup of tea. I don't gamble, and I don't like Penn & Teller. I'd rather be locked into a basement full of Philip Glass recordings.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from documentary Traceroute

People

“.. I also got to meet w:George Maciunas, the father of Fluxus. I wanted to know what this Fluxus was, so I asked him, 'If I put salt in a tea bag and then into hot water, then the salt will dissolve, and when you pull the bag up, there is nothing in it. Is that Fluxus?' 'Let’s make that one right away,' Maciunas replied. And it became a Fluxus object. I told him that I was a painter and that I would keep painting. 'Well,' he said, 'that doesn’t matter, as long as you do it the right way.”

Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist

Getting to know him, I understood that the right way was with a certain sense of justice.
1995 and later, interview in Kirkeby’s home studio, Copenhagen (2012)

Justice, Way, Sense, Water

“I drive from home to my office, a small apartment on the river in the center of Dublin. I write there from 9 a. m. to lunchtime, I take a simple lunch—bread, cheese, nice cup of tea—work until 6 p. m., then home for dinner. Viewed from outside my head it is a singularly dull and uneventful day, but inside my head … aaah.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

How I Write: John Banville on ‘Ancient Light,’ Nabokov, and Dublin (2012)

Home

“There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "MFer, I want more iced tea." You know, I mean everybody was— it was like goin' into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb, in the sense of people were sitting there and they were ordering and having fun, and there wasn't any kinda craziness at all.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

on his meal with Al Sharpton at Sylvia's in Harlem

People, Sense, Personality

“The red-faced president took afternoon tea
With her majesty The Queen
And they watched old films flicker
Across the old palace movie screen
Crying, "What a shame!"
As she slipped in the rain
Poor dancing girl
Well, she won't dance again…”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Radio America"(with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Girl, Dance, Cry

“The House Of Commons has never been a tea-party. It consists of strong-minded, often very idealistic people, who are trying to accomplish something for our country. We are inheritors of an adversarial system and that, in itself, fosters conflict.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Preface, p. xi
The House Of Commons At Work (1993)

People, Strong, Housing, Country

“For you all love the screw-guns the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we take tea with a few guns, o' course you will know what to do—hoo! hoo!
Jest send in your Chief an' surrender it's worse if you fights or you runs:
You may hide in the caves, they'll be only your graves, but you can't get away from the guns!”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Screw-Guns, Stanza 6.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

Love, Fight

“Pig sit still in the strainer
I must have my Pig tea”

Spike Hawkins (1943) British writer

Pig poetry http://www.porkopolis.org/lib/poetry/hawkins-s.htm

“He wandered for a long time along the canals and over the bridges... Steam rose from one boat where men were heating their tea water. He shouted to them and asked them to give him some tea. They asked who he was and he said that he was from Iceland, where Hell is. They invited him out to the boat and gave him something to drink and questioned him about Mount Hekla. He said that he was born and raised at the foot of the mountain and for that reason was called van Hekkenfeld. They asked whether a man could see down into Hell from the summit of Hekla, through the swarm of noxious birds that hovers eternally, shrieking and quarreling, over the crater. He said no, but added that he'd once caught one of these birds with a hooked pole that he'd brought with him up onto the mountain; they were similar to ravens, he said, except for their claws and beaks, which were iron. They asked whether such birds could be eaten and he laughed at their foolishness, but said on the other hand that one could use the claws for hooks and the beak for a pick.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Men, Mountain, Hell, Drink

“In August 2009, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer was discussing a tea party rally in Arizona, where it's legal to carry an unconcealed weapon. She said: "A man at a pro-health care rally… wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip… There are questions about whether this has racial overtones, I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns." All that her audience was shown were a rifle and pistol strapped to a man's back. MSNBC concealed the fact that the armed man was black and did not show the interview he gave to the reporter. Brewer knowingly deceived her audience because an armed black man didn't fit the racial narrative.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

"Leftist race-baiters stir up animosity" (9 May 2012)
2010s

People, Health, Color, Question

“I could never really make the connection between Christian and Catholic. I always imagined that Christ would look down upon the Catholic church and totally disassociate himself from it. I went to severe schools, working class schools, where they would almost chop your fingers off for your own good, and if you missed church on Sunday and went to school on a Monday and they quizzed you on it, you'd be sent to the gallows. It was like 'Brush you teeth NOW or you will DIE IN HELL and you will ROT and all these SNAKES will EAT you'. And I remember all these religious figures, statues, which used to petrify every living child. All these snakes trodden underfoot and blood everywhere. I thought it was so morbid. I mean the very idea of just going to church anyway is really quite absurd. I always felt that it was really like the police, certainly in this country at any rate, just there to keep the working classes humble and in their place. Because of course nobody else but the working class pays any attention to it. I really feel quite sick when I see the Pope giving long, overblown, inflated lectures on nuclear weapons and then having tea with Margaret Thatcher. To me it's total hypocrisy. And when I hear the Pope completely condemning working class women for having abortions and condemning nobody else… to me the whole thing is entirely class ridden, it's just really to keep the working classes in perpetual fear and feeling total guilt.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "All men have secrets and these are Morrissey’s", interview by Neil McCormick,Hot Press (4 May 1984)
In interviews etc., About life and death

Women, Fear, School, Feeling

“The trouble with tea is that originally it was quite a good drink. So a group of the most eminent British scientists put their heads together and made complicated biological experiments to find a way of spoiling it. To the eternal glory of British science, their labour bore fruit.”

George Mikes (1912–1987) Hungarian-born British author

How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils (1946)

Way, Drink, Science

“The turning point was the Tea Act and the resulting Tea Party in Boston in December 1773.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter IV, THE LOGIC OF REBELLION, p. 118

“Earlier this year we went skiing and I was in a shop, paying a bill and there was a woman standing there whom I knew slightly. I was waiting for my bill and she was buying something, a tea strainer. Quite suddenly she said to me, 'Where was your Father killed?'. I was very surprised and blurted out 'Oh Anzio'. Now this is a woman of about my age, so she's 40-ish. She said, 'My Father was killed in the war'. Apparently somebody lent her a copy of 'The Final Cut' and she had listened to the whole thing and she had found it very moving. In fact she said it had moved her to tears. She told me this, standing in the shop, with some effort I suspect, and I remember thinking: That's enough really. It doesn't matter if the Americans don't buy it.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Karl Dallas Interview, 1984
Music

War, Age, Thinking, Tear

“I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Response to reporter's questions (16 March 1992), reported on "Making Hillary an Issue" Nightline (26 March 1992). Quoted in Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/07/11/the_great_bush_kerry_bake_off/. Husband's Presidential campaign (1992 – January 19, 1993)

Life, Home

“For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme,
Nor take her tea without a strategem.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

Satire VI, l. 187.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)

“Well, you won't get me with your Belladonna — in the coffee,
And you won't get me with your aresenic — in the pot of tea,
And you won't get me in a hole to rot — with your hemlock
On the rocks.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Coffee

“Once upon a time…
When the cold wind that blows,
when the cold wind that blows in my heart,
it was a summer breeze and she would meet me in Chinatown,
for opium and tea
and she always brought me flowers
but I spared you those old ballads
All those songs I couldn’t play
But every giro day she’d dress me like a lady boy
And take me high out of the way
Don’t let the horse chase the new deal away, no
If we make love in the morning
I see your eyes look like two marbles in your head”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Lady Don't Fall Backwards"
Lyrics and poetry

Love, Making love, Way, Boy

“And after tea, we play Junior Scrabble. We are the ideal nuclear family. We eat together, we play improving board games instead of watching television, we smile alot. I fear that at any moment I may kill somebody.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

How to Be Good (2001)

Fear, Family, Smile, Game

“Trump was, they concluded, sui generis, a peculiar mutation of the American political system generated by the unholy coupling of reality television and the Tea Party revolt. But Trump is not, in fact, a sport of nature. He reflects trends taking place around the world.”

John Feffer (1963) American foreign policy writer

Trumpism is here to stay: America’s neo-fascist fever dream has only just begun (2016)

World, Nature, Sport

“I'm sick of Portraits and wish very much to take my viols-da-gamba and walk off to some sweet village, where I can paint landskips [landscapes] and enjoy the fag - end of life in quietness and ease. But these fine ladies [very probably his wife and daughters] and their tea-drinkings, dancings, husband-huntings, &c, &c. &c., will fob me out of the last ten years, and I fear miss getting husbands too. But we can say nothing to these things you know, Jackson, we must jog on and be content with the jingling of the bells, only, d-[damned]-it I hate a dust, the kicking up a dust, and being confined in harness to follow the track whilst others ride in the waggon, under cover, stretching their legs in the straw at ease, and gazing at green trees and blue skies without half my 'Taste'. That's d-d [damned] hard. My comfort is I have five viols-da-gamba: three 'Jayes' and two 'Barak Normans”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Adieu. 2 Quotes from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 4 June 1768; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 385 (Appendix A - Letter VIII) 1755 - 1769

Life, Hate, Fear, Drink

Quotes about tea page 2

Quotes about tea
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